ai-playbook

ai-playbook is a skill for Claude Code from kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding. It costs 182 tokens per session (1,825 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A framework for deciding how to build AI features, AI workflows, and AI agents safely in production. It explains when to use a model and when ordinary code is a better fit.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose the smallest suitable AI design, define validation and fallbacks, and review systems that use model calls, embeddings, retrieval, tools, or agents.
Why use it?
It reduces unnecessary complexity and treats model input and output as potentially unreliable.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions Claude Code.

Good fit Use it to choose the smallest suitable AI design, define validation and fallbacks, and review systems that use model calls, embeddings, retrieval, tools, or agents.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/ai-playbook
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding --skill ai-playbook
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for ai-playbook

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/ai-playbook/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/ai-playbook)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/ai-playbook"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/ai-playbook/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for ai-playbook

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/ai-playbook"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding/ai-playbook.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 182 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,825 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00182 $0.01825
Opus 5 $0.00091 $0.00912
Sonnet 5 $0.00036 $0.00365
Haiku 4.5 $0.00018 $0.00183

Measured 6d ago against content hash ec4068c7c068, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ai-playbook scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/skills/ai-playbook/SKILL.md · 131 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 131 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AI Application Playbook

Iron Law: Start one tier below where you think you need to be. Most "agent" problems are workflows; most "workflow" problems are a single model call. Use the smallest pattern that works.

This skill encodes a production-grade framework for deciding when to use AI and how to ship it safely. The full playbook is in playbook.md (10k+ words across four layers); load it only when needed using the routing below.

Prime Directive

Use AI for translation between the messy world and your clean system — never as the clean system itself.

Everything the model reads is untrusted input. Everything the model writes is an untrusted proposal until validated.

Fast triage (use this first)

Before any AI design work, ask in order:

  1. Is the input messy / unstructured / ambiguous? If no → deterministic code, stop.
  2. Can a downstream verifier (human or code) catch errors? If no → don't use AI for the decision.
  3. Is this on the critical latency path with no fallback? If yes → don't use AI here.
  4. Pick the smallest pattern that works: single model call in a workflow → ReAct loop in a state machine → planning agent → autonomous agent. Start at #1.

If the answer to all three is "AI is appropriate," route to the relevant layer below.

When to load the full playbook

Read playbook.md and apply the matching layer based on what the user is doing:

User is doing... Load these layers from playbook.md
Deciding whether to add AI to a feature Layer 1 (Principles)
Architecting an AI feature Layer 1 + Layer 2 (Operating Controls)
Writing code: schema validation, output contract, retries, fallback Layer 2 §2.4, §2.5; Layer 3 §3.1, §3.5
Writing prompts or designing prompts for security Layer 2 §2.5; Layer 3 §3.2 (adversarial test catalog)
Building or reviewing an agent Layer 2 §2.5, §2.6; Layer 3 §3.2
Designing or evaluating RAG Layer 2 §2.7; Layer 3 §3.2 retrieval-poisoning row
Picking a model / deciding to fine-tune Layer 2 §2.9
Sizing cost and latency Layer 2 §2.10, §2.11; Layer 3 §3.4
Designing eval set / regression tests Layer 2 §2.14; Layer 3 §3.2
Preparing for launch Layer 4 §4.1 (unified launch checklist)
Setting up rollout or canary Layer 4 §4.2
Handling an incident Layer 4 §4.3
Testing kill switch Layer 4 §4.4
Onboarding to AI workflow (first 30 days) Layer 4 §4.5
Avoiding overbuilding Layer 4 §4.6

Read the full file on GitHub · 131 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 131 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A ec4068c7c068

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ai-playbook is a skill published in the GitHub repository kumaran-is/claude-code-onboarding (35 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 182 tokens to every session and 1,825 once invoked, about $0.0009 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.